Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Blaize and the Maven (The Energetics Series #1) by Ellen Bard

Blaize has just finished her first chakra trial and is an
adept for fire – Manipura – and is now moving on to train her secondar chakra,
Ajna, with renowned dream walker and prophet, Cuinn

However, Cuinn has had a terrible history with his
previous adherent and is definitely not ready for another one. Especially since
his dreams have been hinting at a terrible future he needs to uncover. The last
thing he needs is an adherent under his feet

But Blaize may be an important part of the prophecy – and
their enemies seem to think so when they target her.

This book is, firstly, a paranormal romance, it was how
it was marketed and labelled. And that normally makes me look at the people who
sent me this book and asking them if they’ve made any effort to examine Fangs
because, in all honestly, we’re not a big fan of many of the paranormal romance
we read

But I liked this book

The story works extremely well in addition to the
romance. Yes, there’s a romance there, but there’s plot there that exists above and beyond the
romance. I have found a lot of paranormal romances have a plot line in addition
to the romance, but it often exists just to further the romance – and you can
tell. It’s generally shallow, under-developed and with plot holes you could
drive a double decker bus through. Here the plot and the romance weren’t
co-dependent on each other (which, when we think about it, makes a lot of
sense. Romance may be important to the character, but it’s unlikely their love
life is really going to have that much influence on the fate of the world etc.
No, not even with the earth shattering orgasms).

There were some clichés to the romance I didn’t care for,
or I’ve just seen so many times that I just don’t have patience for them any more.
Both characters have past issues that make them reluctant to venture into a
relationship (both of which are a little dubious). Both have tragic or
semi-tragic pasts. Both get over said tragic pasts in such an unseemly length
of time that I’m left wondering why the author felt the need to have them there
at all. It’s like someone looked up a trope list and decided “hey, we need to
have X, Y, and Z, put them in”. And, really, if you’re going to give your
characters a compelling developed reason why they avoid relationships… fine –
but actually have them avoid relationships. If it takes them 3 days to resolve
these terribad issues before getting to the humping then maybe those issues
shouldn’t be there

But there were also some nice subversions. While there
are many exceptions, we still do see a lot of celebrating virginal or “gently
used” women next to experienced, older and sexually more capable man. In this
case neither party is a virgin and, if anything, Blaize is the instigator of a
sexual relationship – she’s confident, experienced, a happy pleasure seeker.
And she is the one who wants a sexual relationship rather than a romantic one.
At no point is she shamed for this or looked down on for this – she is a sexual
being and that’s never seen as a bad thing

She’s also the more capable fighter with more direct,
fighting powers. She is trained to be a soldier, her element (fire) is
considered the element of the Energetics who fight, while Cuinn is more
cerebral with a psychic super power which is all about dream walking and seeing
the future. She is the more physical and dangerous of the pair. It’s probably
depressing that this is a subversion, but it generally is.

She is kidnapped – as seems to be an utter requirement
for every female main character in a romance. But she does rescue herself
almost entirely which does a lot to help remove the problem of this repeated
trope.

I actually really like both characters – they’re very
well realised with their own histories and viewpoints and their own very discernible
opinions and voices. They’re very well realised and not just in terms of their
romance. The secondary characters are only touched on so they’re much less
developed - but we’re missing any of the usual female antagonism. There’s even
a considerable level of sympathy for the villain no matter how angry Blaize is
with them. While they’re not extremely well developed, I rather suspect that
many of them will be developed in future books, if nothing else because I
suspect they will be future romantic pairs in future books.

This story doesn’t have much in the way of overarching
plot beyond introduction. We know that Cuinn has seen some ominous future
scariness that requires a group of Energetics to come together to stop it. We
also have an ominous big bad who was manipulating the enemy in this episode who
wants a different result for this. We don’t know what is at stake. We don’t
know what they’re actually fighting. We don’t know who the bad guys are. We don’t
know why this group of Energetics will save the world

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Honestly I only
noticed the lack of great detail in the metaplot on writing this review and
thinking back on the book – I didn’t miss it while reading it. It gave a nicely
ominous sense and a good background for why this story is happening while not
actually getting in the way of the main elements of this book – introduction.

Introduction of the world, the history (with its ominous
Atlantis flashback that gives texture to the overall story and we get a sense
of what the meta is all about) and the primary characters, their support
network and how this series is going to grow are all done excellently. This is
all about the introduction and it does a very very good job of doing that
introduction, all alongside a well written and paced story. Yes, that includes
the romance that I wasn’t a fan of but certainly was a good deal better than most
I have read and I loved how it balanced with the plot. The romance was there,
it was important to these characters but it wasn’t more important than the plot
nor was the plot dependent on it. And as soon as both characters realise what
is at stake with the prophecy and the plot they didn’t allow any of their
emotional issues to spill over to the actual plot line. That’s something else I
appreciate a lot because so many of these romances do seem to make their
protagonists’ romantic life more important than the world itself. In general, there’s
a lot I like about this book.

In terms of diversity there’s a huge issue with the
underpinning of the book – all of the Energetics get their power from chakras and these are directly
lifted from Hinduism. Each Energetic has a primary chakra and a secondary
chakra which shapes their power – Blaize has fire and psychic – or Manipura and
Ajna. These are directly lifted from Indian religions, but there’s absolutely
no acknowledgement of this, there’s no indication of the source of these
beliefs (and I haven’t used the Hindu mythology tag on this review). All of
this magic and customs and beliefs is depicted as coming from Atlantis – a long
lost civilisation – and the people are both not entirely human and then spread
all around the world. There’s very little indication of the race of these
original Atlanteans beyond “brown eyes and dark hair” which pretty much is the ultimate
cop-out descriptor since it can pretty much apply to any race.

We also have references to Yin and Yang energy – drawing on
East Asian religions with, again, no acknowledgement. And masters teaching
their students are called Mavens – from Hebrew. There’s a lot of snatching of
traditions here with no real acknowledgement of where they came from. In fact,
there is a claim as to where they came from – Atlantis, so it’s less lack of
acknowledgement and more outright erasure of their origins.

In terms of character diversity there are some minor
character inclusions. As I mentioned above, the side characters are not overly
developed beyond Blaize and Cuinn, both of whom appear to be White. Beyond bit
characters, like a Chinese master who helped train Blaize briefly, the only
other major POC I can think of is Tierra, one of Cuinn’s friends who is
described as having “butterscotch” skin. It’s one of those descriptions which
is both a little vague and has that problematic element of comparing POC to
food again. She’s also something of a caregiver to the other characters

I am very unsure about Blaize herself. No description of
her particularly points to her being a POC. Her aunt is and so is her cousin
who appear briefly at the beginning of the book – but I don’t know if Fai is
her blood relative or her husband, Marius is. Blaize doesn’t really stand out
to me as a POC but nor do I feel I can definitively say she isn’t. There are no
LGBTQ people or disabled people in this book.

I am curious about this series and would like to see it
develop more – but I have some extra reservations about the whole appropriation
that utterly underpins the whole series which is a definite problem. It makes
it hard for me to fully enjoy the series as the elephant in the room is not
really ignorable. I am also concerned that the romance could easily overwhelm
this developing powerful world setting and story